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OBSERVATIONS OF A CONTRACT 
SURGEON 



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WILLIAM F. WHYTE 




Reprinted from the Wisconsin Magazine of History 
Volume III, Number 2, December, ]<)]<) 



OBSERVATIONS OF A CONTRACT 
SURGEON 



WILLIAM F. WHYTE 




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Reprinted from the Wisconsin Magazine of History 
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OBSERVATIONS OF A CONTRACT SURGEON 

William F. Whyte 

I am requested to write a short narrative of my experiences 
in army service as a contract officer. The experiences of a 
medical officer of an army are as a rule in the highest degree 
unromantic. I have not been enough of a soldier to boast of 
my achievements. I cannot shoulder my crutch and show 
how fields are won, but I will attempt to tell how a man with 
a desire to serve a great cause can do his duty and be as 
useful as if he carried a rifle or handled a machine gun. When 
war with Germany was declared I wrote to the surgeon 
general's office offering my services and received the reply 
that I was beyond the age of commission. Three months later 
I applied again with the same result. I foresaw that there 
would be a great demand for medical officers and if volunteers 
did not come forward to meet the wants of the rapidly mobiliz- 
ing army, it might be found necessary to let down the bars 
and admit men to the medical service who were over age of 
commission (fifty-five), if they were found to be profession- 
ally and physically qualified. My guess was a good one, for 
the surgeon general, who is certainly a high class man and 
patriotically desired to do his whole duty in putting into the 
field a physically perfect army, found that there were not 
enough well-trained men among the medical recruits to act as 
tuberculosis examiners. Reserve officers in large numbers 
were being trained for that service, but until there should be 
a sufficient number to meet the demand the surgeon general 
asked a number of the life insurance companies to propose 
the names of their experienced examiners who could be called 
on for a few months to fill the gap. 

My name was proposed to the War Department in Sep- 
tember, and on November 1, I was ordered to Fort Benjamin 



4 William F. Whyte 

Harrison for a short preliminary training. I might say here 
that the regular army officers did not favor this method of 
filling up the ranks of the service with contract men, and I 
was told soon after reaching Fort Harrison that I must be 
prepared to be snubbed by the camp surgeons, who were ready 
to make themselves disagreeable and if possible demonstrate 
to the contract officer that he was an unnecessary factor in the 
army. If I had known that the M. O. T. C. ( Medical Officers' 
Training Camp) at Fort Harrison was a try-out affair as 
well as a training camp, my enthusiasm might have received 
a setback at the beginning of my service. I was told at 
Washington by Colonel Bruns when I asked him why my 
contract read "for thirty days" that it was only a form. Some 
of my colleagues found that it was a reality, for at the end 
of thirty days they were ordered home. In my class at Fort 
Benjamin Harrison there were eight contract officers; two 
were ordered to Camp Custer at the end of the period; the 
remainder got their orders to go home at government expense. 
Fort Benjamin Harrison was a M. O. T. C. ; in addition there 
were about three thousand recruits from the national army 
in training. The men had been in camp two months, and as I 
watched their evolutions I said to an acquaintance, "I don't 
believe the German army can produce the equal of those 
fellows." I had seen the Potsdam garrison, the flower of the 
Prussian army, at Berlin thirty years before, and the Prussian 
soldiers always impressed me as well drilled machines without 
spirit or initiative. 

I went to headquarters to report. While there I met Cap- 
tain Stoll, one of the instructors. I asked him if I could get a 
good room in the barracks. I had an inkling of the hardships 
which to a young fellow might seem hardly worth noticing, 
but to a man over sixty-five were matters for serious con- 
sideration. He smilingly replied, "Why, Doctor, we will give 
you a room and bath." I was directed to Barracks No. 3 and 
told that I might sleep in that particular shanty, but would 



Observations of a Contract Surgeon 5 

have to furnish my own cot and bedding. There were in all 
forty occupants of the barracks. I bought an army cot and 
mattress and borrowed some quilts from the quartermaster 
until my bedding should arrive. I had never slept on such a 
contraption before and by 4 a.m. I was wide awake and 
anathematizing the hard spots in my mattress. When reveille 
sounded at six o'clock I got up with the alacrity of youth and 
seizing my wash basin and towel made a rush for the bath 
room (eighteen showers) a hundred yards away. After a 
hasty rub I managed to get dressed by the time the breakfast 
bell rang at six-thirty. In the mess room at Fort Benjamin 
Harrison, if you brought your manners with you, the chances 
were that you would go away hungry. I took note of the 
situation in about one minute. I will not say how fast or 
how much I ate; a country doctor after forty years' experi- 
ence, who has a good digestion, becomes what David Harum 
calls "a good feeder." I did my best and left the mess table 
with my hunger appeased. 

The tuberculosis branch of the training camp numbered 
about thirty or forty medical officers of whom eight, like 
myself, were in service by contract. The two instructors, 
Major Hoyt of Philadelphia and Captain Stoll of Hartford, 
were high class men. Their duties consisted in instructing the 
men in the army method of chest examination and incidentally 
in finding out if a man knew enough about physical diagnosis 
to measure up to the requirements of the service. I had been 
out of practice for four years and felt rather timid, but in a 
day or two I gained confidence. I found some of the men 
were weaker than myself. It was intensive work — six hours 
daily — with the evening taken up by study. I did not have 
much time to worry about my future. Still, I was greatly 
relieved when I received orders to go to Camp Custer. It was 
certainly a matter for self -congratulation, that an old fellow 
who might be called rusty through lack of practice was 
deemed qualified to act as a tuberculosis examiner in the army. 



6 William F. Whyte 

The contract surgeon ranks as first lieutenant only, with 
no chance for promotion. No quarters are assigned him 
unless he is on active duty in foreign service or in a training 
camp; and he has no right to claim pension for disease or 
injury contracted in the service. The knowledge also that he 
is to a certain extent looked down on as an inferior by some 
young fellow who is proud of his lieutenant's bars and his 
uniform makes the position of the contract officer the reverse 
of agreeable. The feeling, however, that he is serving a great 
cause is a solace that makes his life endurable. One noble old 
fellow, a doctor from Minnesota, aged sixty-nine, was heart- 
broken when he was ordered home. He was full of patriotic 
zeal and had tried to enlist as a private when war was declared. 
He was very happy at the prospect of being in the medical 
service and told of his grandson who was in the army in the 
South and what a joy it would be if he could be ordered to 
serve in the same camp. It was my good fortune to go to 
a camp where my son was stationed as a lieutenant in the 
310th Engineers. I wired my wife to meet me there. 

Camp Custer is beautifully located five miles from Battle 
Creek, Michigan. The camp was on a high ridge surrounded 
by marshy land, an ideal situation from a sanitary standpoint. 
A fine asphalt road and a cheap jitney service rendered it so 
accessible that several hundred army officers' families lived in 
Battle Creek. The trolley service between the camp and the 
town was also prompt and reasonable in price. 

My wife soon engaged pleasant rooms in Battle Creek, 
and although work in the camp was strenuous, my colleagues 
were pleasant fellows, and the homecoming every afternoon 
was the reverse of disagreeable. The only drawback to the 
life of the camp was the thought which would come into my 
mind every day that I was examining men to ascertain 
whether they were fit to be shot by German snipers. 

The winter of 1917-18 was extremely cold in Michigan. 
Some of the army officers thought it would toughen the men to 



Observations of a Contract Surgeon 7 

have them drill and go on hikes in the severest weather; the 
result was frozen faces, fingers, and feet. The regimental 
surgeons protested to the commandant against such inhuman- 
ity, but were told to mind their own business. When, how- 
ever, the martinet at the head of the camp was threatened with 
an appeal to Washington there was a right-about face and the 
men were not ordered out except when the surgical staff 
approved. To make a man stand guard for two hours over 
a mule or a truck when the thermometer registered twenty 
below zero may have been in accordance with army regula- 
tions, but it conflicted with common sense and humanity. 

We were told at Fort Benjamin Harrison by Major Hoyt 
that fifty examinations would be considered a day's work; 
after a few weeks we found that a man was considered 
inefficient if he could not make seventy-five in one day. The 
President of the Board, which usually consisted of twelve 
members, wanted to make a good record in the surgeon 
general's office, and so we were urged to speed up as rapidly 
as was consistent with accuracy of diagnosis. I will describe 
the method followed at Camp Custer, although we were com- 
pelled afterwards to modify it to a certain extent. The men 
were brought to the base hospital, one hundred at a time. An 
orderly gave them instruction as to how to breathe and cough 
when they came before the examiners. They were stripped 
to the waist and the examiner applied his stethoscope in 
twenty different places on the chest, the soldier breathing and 
coughing meanwhile. (Hand before your mouth: breathe 
in, breathe out, and cough, was the method. ) Three minutes 
was the time allowed for the examination of the normal chest, 
including the heart. 

When an abnormality was detected the examiner referred 
the case to his associate, who occupied the same room. If he 
also found the same lesion, the case was referred to the captain 
of the Board. If the lesion was a serious one the man was 
sent to the Superior Board which consisted of three examiners, 



8 William F. Whyte 

who S. C. D.'d him (marked him for discharge from the 
army) . If the disease was slight, the man was not sent to 
the Superior Board but was ordered to return in ten days, 
when all the "come backs," as they were called, were examined 
by the whole board. This was a different proposition from 
examining a patient in the doctor's office. People who come 
there are sick, or think they are. These were men who had 
all been passed on by local boards; none of them knew or 
thought anything was the matter with their lungs or hearts. 
I frequently made the remark to my colleagues, "How could 
this man pass a board?" His unfitness for any army service 
was so apparent. I have been led to believe that the local 
examiners passed many "no goods," thinking that they might 
possibly get by the camp tuberculosis examiners, and thus the 
community would be rid of an undesirable. 

The acid test was "activity." If there was a minute area 
of active disease in the upper lobe of either lung, the man was 
rejected without hesitation; but if either lung showed a tuber- 
cular deposit in a quiescent condition, he was allowed to go 
through unless the area involved was too large. As Colonel 
Bushnell, the head of the tuberculosis work in the army, him- 
self a victim of chronic tuberculosis, said, "These men may 
outlive any of you." It is a well-known fact proved by post- 
mortem statistics, that a large majority of those people who 
die of other ailments have had tuberculosis some time in their 
life. Physical appearances were often very deceptive. A 
skinny little chap in spite of his appearance would be found 
to have normal lungs, while a stalwart muscular giant would 
be found with active disease. The heaviest man I examined in 
the army — a Brooklyn recruit who weighed two hundred 
forty-nine pounds — had a well-marked cicatrized cavity in his 
upper left lobe. He had no doubt been a long-time patron of 
those widely advertised and well-known citizens of New York, 
George Ehret, or Jack Buppert, who are now engaged in the 
manufacture of two and three-fourths' per cent beer. He was 



Observations of a Contract Surgeon 9 

no doubt discharged from the service, as a man in his condition 
would soon break down under the strenuous discipline of army 
life. 

The daily grind at Camp Custer was from 8 to 11 :30 a. m., 
and from 1 :30 to 4 or 5 p. m. just as the men were brought in 
for examination. With the methods prescribed there we 
found that examining seventy-five men was a heavy day's 
work. The officers came in hit or miss ; they were allowed to 
undress in the examiner's room, while the privates took off 
their clothes in the hallway and came in by number. 

From twenty-one thousand six hundred forty recruits 
examined at Camp Custer we rejected ninety-six for tuber- 
culosis. Three hundred were held in reserve for future 
observation as they showed quiescent lesions or what is called 
fibrosis. One hundred thirty-eight were rejected for heart 
disease, and two hundred were held up for other chest defects. 
One of our Board with a mathematical turn of mind found 
that it cost Uncle Sam thirty cents a head for tuberculosis 
examinations. A Canadian medical expert has recently 
estimated that every case of tuberculosis who went to France 
and was sent home for treatment cost the Canadian govern- 
ment $5,250. Thus the importance of trained tuberculosis 
examiners can easily be understood. A man in the service 
with tuberculosis is not only a source of infection but a dead- 
weight and a drag on the army. 

As our work was coming to a close, the President of our 
Board said one morning, "I want five of you gentlemen to 
go with me to headquarters to examine the higher officers," 
and called for volunteers. I said that I would as soon examine 
a colored boy as a colonel. He afterwards told an amusing 
story of his experience with the commanding general. The 
General said to him, "Major, I suppose that I will have to be 
examined." 

The Major replied, "That is the order from the surgeon 
general's office." 



10 William F. Whyte 

"Well, it is all damned nonsense. I was examined at 
Washington three months ago." 

"Very well," said the Major, "I will have to report you 
as not examined." 

The General took off his jacket and pulled up his shirt 
and said gruffly, "]S T ow you can examine me." 

"You will have to take your shirt off," said the Major. 

"Damned if I will," snarled the General, walking up and 
down the room. 

The Major waited until he caught the irate officer's 
eye, saluted, and quietly walked out. The next day he 
received a telephone call from headquarters asking when it 
would be convenient for him to come down and examine 

General . An ambulance would be sent for him. He 

was most courteously received when he reached headquarters, 
and the General submitted to be examined according to regu- 
lations. The Major told us afterwards : "I want you, gentle- 
men, to remember this, for when you are on your ground 
stand by the army regulations regardless of the rank of any 
man who may be your superior officer." 

We examined one day six hundred men from the officers' 
training camp who had fallen down at the first camp and got 
their commissions after several months' subsequent training. 
The major at the head of our Board said to me afterwards, 
"God help the United States of America if that is the kind of 
stuff they are going to make officers of." A large proportion 
of them might properly be called culls. However, the young 
fellows aspiring to commissions whom we examined at Camp 
Dix were certainly high class men. I do not believe that 
their superiors could have been found in any army in the 
world. 

I have said that I got the impression that the local boards 
sent unfit men into the service with the idea of getting rid of 
the "no goods" in the community. That policy met with no 
success, as a man who had to undergo the careful scrutiny of 



Observations of a Contract Surgeon ll 

nine examining boards was sure to be caught somewhere if he 
had any serious physical or mental defect. I have no doubt 
but that the American army was superior to that of any of the 
other warring nations, as we had not at any time a shortage of 
man power and therefore it was not necessary to accept any 
man below the army standard. 

Occasionally a line officer would interfere and try to exert 
his influence against the decision of the examiners. I remem- 
ber a case at Camp Custer where my associate found activity 
in the upper lobe of the left lung in what is called "Kronigs 
isthmus." I confirmed his diagnosis. The captain was called 
in ; he agreed with us, and the man was sent to the Superior 
Board and marked for rejection. He had been twenty years 
in the army and was very indignant when he perceived that 
we were not going to pass him. He said he had merely a 
cold which he had contracted by being moved from Mexico 
to Michigan. He had been a soldier in the "pacifist" war 
which our country had been conducting on the border the year 
before. The next week he returned with a new service record. 
We asked him how he got it. He replied, "My colonel don't 
believe you doctors. He says I have only a bad cold." He 
was marked for rejection but came again with a new record. 
After his third rejection we were told that he was the colonel's 
pet and an excellent man to take care of horses. When he 
came back the fourth time he had no papers but begged for 
another examination. I said to him "My boy, the govern- 
ment will take good care of you and send you to a sanitarium 
in New Mexico. You tell your colonel that he can't put it 
over any tuberculosis examiner in the army ; under no condi- 
tion will you be allowed to go overseas with your regiment." 
I was sorry for him as he was an Irishman, full of fight, and 
anxious, as he said, to get a shot at the "German devils." 

The last week in January saw the finish of the work in 
Camp Custer. When I first went into the service I expected 
that I would not be needed more than three or four months 



12 William F. Whyte 

for the line of work I had engaged to do. When we had 
examined all the recruits in Camp Custer the officers in the 
medical reserve looked forward to a transfer; and I antici- 
pated an order to go home. The experiment of employing 
contract surgeons from civil life had not proved a success. 
The medical men who went into the service for an indefinite 
time found the work hard, the environment unpleasant, the 
pay unremunerative, and after a few months the majority of 
them sent in their contracts to Washington for cancellation. 
I was told by the president of the Tuberculosis Board that 
if I would agree to stay in the service until the end of the 
war I would be ordered to Camp Greenleaf, Georgia, for 
instruction. Between the first and second drafts there was a 
lull in the work of examining recruits and the surgeon general 
thought it best to keep the examiners busy at the line of work 
they had been engaged in, so they were sent to various training 
camps in the South. My orders to Camp Greenleaf came on 
February 1. Anxious to leave a land of ice and snow we took 
the train at once for Chicago and then the "Dixie Flyer" (a 
misnomer) to Chattanooga. It was a happy change from a 
temperature of ten degrees below zero to the opening of a 
southern spring in forty-eight hours. Camp Greenleaf is 
located on the site of the battle field of Chickamauga and also 
on the exact spot where Chickamauga Camp was located 
during the Spanish American war. The great advance in 
sanitation since that time had revolutionized conditions and 
the camp, instead of being a breeding place for infections 
"without a microscope or a test tube," was strictly sanitary in 
all its appointments. 

While at Camp Custer I had been advised by some of my 
colleagues to apply for a commission in the reserve, but the 
longer I served in the army the more pleased I was that my 
application was rejected. The contract officer does not sleep 
on a bed of roses, but he has much more freedom than is 



Observations of a Contract Surgeon 13 

allowed the regular army officer, and my rank in the service 
made life much easier for me. 

When I reported at Camp Greenleaf, the young lieuten- 
ant who wrote down my personnel in the registry said, "You 
can put your cot in that corner, Lieutenant." 

"I am not going to sleep here," I replied. "I am going to 
stay in Chattanooga with my wife." 

"But you must stay in the barracks," he answered. "No 
one is allowed sleep out without a pass. It is tighter than hell 
here." 

"I don't care how tight it is," I returned. "I am beyond 
the age of commission, and if I sleep in that barracks I'll get 
what you call pneumococcus bronchitis and die, and I don't 
propose to die in the service unless it is necessary." 

"You will have to get a permit then." 

"Very well," I said, "fill out an application and I will 
sign it." 

I got the permit next morning. In a few minutes a 
sergeant approached me and said, "Lieutenant Colonel 
Beardsley wishes to speak to you. You will find him in that 
tent," pointing down the hill. 

I went to the Colonel's tent and asked him what he wanted 
to see me about. 

He said, "I will examine you physically today and 
medically tomorrow." 

"I think not, Colonel," I answered. "I am a contract 
officer. I have already served in two camps and have been 
passed on medically at Fort Benjamin Harrison. I don't 
think that you need to take up any time with me." 

"I rather think you are right, Lieutenant, and I will excuse 
you," was the reply. I was known in the camp in a few days 
as the man who did as he darn pleased. I inquired for Major 
Nichols, the head of the tuberculosis instructors, and next day 
became a member of his class. 



14 William F. Whyte 

I found that eight of my colleagues on the Board at Camp 
Custer who had preceded me to Camp Greenleaf had been 
engaged in the pleasant occupation of drilling in the Georgia 
mud. One of them, a fine fellow from Iowa, said to me, "My 
patriotism is all gone, and I am completely tired out." When 
I called on Colonel Page, the camp commandant, to get a 
permit to attend Major Nichols' class I told him who I was 
and where I had been. I said, "What do you think, Colonel? 
They told me I would have to drill here." 

He broke into a hearty laugh. "Major, old fellows like 
you and I don't have to drill in this camp. That is damned 
nonsense." 

I told him that my colleagues who had been drilled and 
trained at Fort Benjamin Harrison and who had been ex- 
amining recruits at Camp Custer for several months were 
also drilling. 

"Give me their names and I will see that they get some- 
thing else to do besides drilling." 

Colonel Page was a regular army officer, and his shoulder 
straps did not cause any swelling of his head such as we often 
noticed in officers of the national army. 

Major Estes Nichols is a distinguished member of the 
medical profession and a well-known authority in New Eng- 
land on tuberculosis. He was very popular as a teacher, as 
was Major Good Kind of Chicago, who gave instruction in 
cardio vascular diseases. Captain Keltie of Philadelphia 
was the lecturer on pathology and an eloquent and impressive 
teacher. 

Within a few days after my arrival at Camp Greenleaf 
I found one of the main reasons for the pneumococcus bron- 
chitis which was so prevalent. The barracks were only 
shanties, built on posts as a foundation ; the heating appara- 
tus consisted of small stoves which required two men and a 
boy to "keep them in action." The medical officers would go 
out on a two hours' drill through the mud, one hundred twenty 



Observations of a Contract Surgeon 15 

steps per minute, and then with no opportunity to change 
their wet underwear would be compelled to sit in a cold 
barracks and listen to a lecture. A good friend of mine from 
Madison, a major in the service, went to the infirmary within 
a few days as a result of this discipline and was transferred to 
the hospital for several weeks to recover from an attack of 
broncho-pneumonia. 

The medical staff of the base hospital at Fort Oglethorpe 
was insufficient in numbers and I gathered from what I saw 
in the wards (and the morgue) that some of the attending 
surgeons were not very strong on diagnosis. When a medical 
man cannot diagnose as common a complication of pneumonia 
as empyema until the subject reaches the post-mortem table, 
he does not deserve to rank high as a practitioner, whether in 
the army or in civil life. This is a painful subject, and I will 
not go more into detail as criticism at this late day will not 
accomplish any good. One finds in the army that it is the 
proper thing to keep silent but when a man has lived over 
sixty years in the world and has been in the habit of expressing 
his opinion on all subjects, it is rather trying to be compelled 
to keep quiet when he feels like denouncing incompetence. A 
friend of mine who had been fifteen years in the medical ser- 
vice told me that the only way to play the army game is to do 
as you are told by your superior officers and hold your tongue. 
A man who has an opinion of his own and expresses it does 
nothing but make trouble for himself. In the bosom of your 
family it is not always the part of wisdom to express a differ- 
ence of opinion; in Uncle Sam's army it is the height of 
imprudence. 

At Camp Custer and at Fort Benjamin Harrison the 
recruits we examined for admission to the service were men 
of fit quality for the making of first-class soldiers. When 
the physically unfit had been weeded out by the examining 
board, I do not think that finer material for an army could 
have been found in the world. Both the Huns and the Allies 



16 William F. Whyte 

were compelled to make use of every man who could march 
or carry a gun but we had the choice of the young manhood 
of America. Quite different were my impressions when I 
reached Camp Greenleaf and came in contact with the 
Southern cracker. The curse of slavery, the lack of the school- 
house, hookworm and malaria, all have left their influence on 
the Southern boy of today. That the Civil War lasted four 
years can only be accounted for by the bravery of the Con- 
federate soldier. That the men of the Southland fought like 
heroes cannot be denied; and they did so because it was in 
their blood. 

I have spoken of the unnecessary drilling to which the 
medical officers were compelled to submit. Among the medi- 
cal officers whose duties consisted of examining the lungs 
and hearts of the recruits there was a pronounced feeling that 
serious and often permanent damage was done by ignorant 
drillmasters to boys who had not been accustomed to strenu- 
ous physical exercise. In conversation one day with a promi- 
nent Philadelphia heart specialist on this subject he expressed 
himself emphaticalfy on what he called the stupidity of the 
army regulations. He told me that one day in August on 
the parade ground at Fort Oglethorpe he saw some recruits 
drilled for two hours without a drop of water to drink with 
the thermometer at 100 in the shade. He denounced the 
practice of taking boys who had been clerks in stores and 
bookkeepers and putting them through the same drill which 
was required of lumbermen and farmers and athletes. He 
said that undoubtedly many cases of organic heart lesions 
would be developed by such senseless procedure. I am sure 
that some of the medical officers over forty-five suffered per- 
manent injury by drilling when compelled to keep step with 
men of half their age on the parade ground. 

One day at Camp Greenleaf I met a New England offi- 
cer. I said to him, "Captain, what are you doing here?" 

He replied, "I am drilling." 



Observations of a Contract Surgeon 17 

"How do you stand it?" I asked. 

"I don't stand it. I pant like a dog when we are through. 
They put some of those long legged boys in the front rank 
and I have to keep up with them." 

I told him that at his age (fifty-three) he was laying the 
foundation for heart disease in the future. At Camp Dix I 
became well acquainted with a medical officer fifty years old, 
from Tennessee. On the way home one evening I said to 
him, "Captain, you act blue tonight." 

He replied, "I have the blues; I have been told that I have 
a presystolic murmur, and I am going to be S. C. D'd. I 
was perfectly well when I passed my examination for en- 
trance into the service and I now am thrown into the discard. 
I gave up my practice and now I have to go back home and 
every enemy I have will point his finger at me as long as I 
live as a man whom Uncle Sam did not consider as compe- 
tent for army service." 

I have no doubt that his heart lesion had been developed 
by his strenuous exercise. Blundering on the part of "swivel 
chair artists" in Washington had done him a rank injustice. 

The old saying that a man should not run after forty is 
a true one. The heart muscle begins to change between 
forty -five and fifty and a man who indulges in strenuous and 
unwonted exertion after that time is sure to pay the penalty. 
One of the most famous surgeons in the United States died 
from heart dilation as the result of mountain climbing in 
South America. The authorities in Washington are, no 
doubt, responsible for shortening the lives of many patriotic 
men who volunteered to serve their country and were com- 
pelled to endure unnecessary hardships which they did not 
dream of or were in no way fitted for when they entered 
the service. Fifty-five was the age limit and the War De- 
partment accepted men up to that age and drilled them as if 
they were boys. 



18 William F. Whyte 

The hygiene of the camps where it was my fortune to 
serve was excellent. Good drainage and pure water are neces- 
sities for a military camp. Some of the camps, especially 
in the South, were the reverse of hygienic. General Gorgas 
denounced the location of some as having been selected by 
political influence. One was located in what was practically 
a morass. Camp Bowie at one time had two thousand cases 
of sickness without a toilet. Politics were said to be ad- 
journed, but it is not possible to escape the conclusion that 
this was a Southern democratic war, fought largely by North- 
ern men and financed by Northern money. Representative 
Kitchin said publicly that the North wanted the war and they 
ought to pay for it. 

I have said that some of the local boards seemed to think 
it was well to send the "no goods" from the small towns, 
thinking that in this way they could clean up their localities. 
It is probable that in some cases influences were brought to 
bear on the local examiners to keep sons of wealthy men at 
home. In one famous case the son of an automobile manu- 
facturer was kept out of the service through pull with some 
high authority. He was probably not more fitted for a sol- 
dier than his father was for a United States senator. At 
Camp Custer I knew of a number of the sons of wealthy men 
and millionaires in their own right who were serving as pri- 
vates. 

I served for a short time at Camp Dix on a rejection 
board and one evening when leaving the infirmary where I 
was stationed I was asked if I would examine a sergeant who 
was about to go overseas; he wanted forty-eight-hour leave 
to see his wife, who had just given birth to a child. When I 
had finished my examination and took up his service record 
to affix my stamp I read the name of one of the best known 
families of railway magnates in this country. The young 
man's occupation was railroad president. He was made a 
lieutenant a short time after his arrival in France, as he was 



Observations of a Con trad Surgeon 19 

an accomplished linguist. An entirely different case came 
to my notice in Camp Dix— that of a colored man forty-two 
years old with a wife and three children ; he had been drafted 
from North Carolina. He was far past the draft age and 
told the examining board that he been told in his native town 
that there was no escape for him. No doubt he filled the 
shoes of some favorite with a white skin. The colonel of the 
regiment took up the matter with the War Department and 
the man was no doubt sent home to his family. 

I feel certain that the majority of the medical reserve 
men in the army would gladly have resigned and gone home, 
as the irksomeness and boredom incident to life in a canton- 
ment was in the highest degree trying to a man's nerves as 
well as to his patriotism. I knew men who were well quali- 
fied surgeons in civil life who had been in the army a year 
without seeing a sore finger. Counting blankets, picking up 
cigar stumps, scrubbing barrack floors, and splitting wood 
were hardly occupations for gentlemen who had gone into 
the service as surgeons in time of war. I often said to some 
of my colleagues on the T. B. examining board that if they 
could not go to France they were at least doing some useful 
work. The great and gallant force of men sent overseas 
was the output of the boards, whose members certainly per- 
formed a duty only less useful than that of the surgeons who 
on the firing line and in the hospitals of France and Flanders 
so nobly sustained the honor of the medical profession. 

The first case of influenza was diagnosed at Camp Dix 
on September 18. On the following Monday our examining 
board was disbanded and its members were all detailed for 
duty in the hospital annexes which were hastily improvised 
to meet the overflow of cases from the base hospital. I was 
a diagnostician in Hospital Annex Number 3 and for three 
weeks was compelled to see young fellows — the flower of 
American manhood — die like flies day by day. I had my 
quarters in Mount Holly, a few miles distant, and went to 



20 William F. Whyte 

Camp by train every day. It was very depressing to see 
twenty-five or more coffins at the station every morning when 
I reached camp and a similar number there again when I went 
home in the evening. There were over eight hundred deaths 
in Camp Dix from influenza. I was very glad to go back 
to my work of examining hearts and lungs. 

An incident which caused a great deal of comment at the 
time may be related here. When the epidemic had died out 
General Scott gave permission for the reopening of the camp 
theaters and places of entertainment. The first time the 
"Big Y" — the largest Y. M. C. A. building — was opened a 
movie was put on. Pictures were shown of prominent gov- 
ernment officers, among them Secretaries Daniels and Baker. 
I will not mention any others; with each there was a ripple 
of applause. When Colonel Roosevelt's picture was shown 
on the screen, the applause was deafening. It was easy to see 
who, among national figures, was first in the hearts of the 
men at Camp Dix. 

"The victorious retreat," as the Huns termed their rapid 
retrograde movements in the fall of 1918, showed plainly 
that the end of the war was in sight, and I sent in a request 
to the surgeon general that my contract be cancelled on No- 
vember 1, which completed a year of service in the army. I 
felt that for a man in the sixty-eighth year of his age it had 
been a great privilege to have worn Uncle Sam's uniform. 



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